Being a Doctor
is scary, wonderful, fulfilling, empowering, emotionally/mentally/physically exhausting, and is a career that promotes personal and professional growth. I have both loved and hated being a doctor at multiple different times this year, but luckily my feelings towards residency are almost completely positive. Except for the pay and the hours. But Lila keeps reminding me that it's only temporary. Sometimes I feel like that's my mantra. I am about to start my second out of three years of residency - that means I will be an upper level and that the new interns will look to me for help. I think that might scare me more than almost anything else. What if I don't know the answers? What about when I am terribly wrong? What if I just keep messing up and don't become a good physician? I frequently hear my peers joke about the same sentiments... it's interesting to see some of the smartest people who work so hard feel so insecure. The opposite side of that coin is that when you do things well - when you really get a complicated case, when you think of a diagnosis that is off the wall but correct, when you catch something early, when you do well on your ITEs (In-Training Exams), when your patient's symptoms are well controlled or they feel so much better... you feel so good. Like I said, scary, wonderful, and fulfilling.
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| Graduation |
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| Resident Retreat with my fellow FM peers. |
I am doing so well in my personal life that it trumps my professional life regularly. I look forward to coming home. I am now a homebody. Lila and I have built gardens, started projects, gained hobbies (Lila's is walking stick making and wood burning, and mine is gardening and making our house more green). We have traveled extensively over the last year- we went to Colorado to visit Lila's best friend Robin (who is awesome), to Columbia to see my peer get married (love you, Catalina y Juan), to Taos for a weekend away (snow snowmobiling for the win), and most recently to the Pacific NW coast. We were blow away by the beauty of nature that they have there. I swear, the essence of wildness resides in the Pacific NW.
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| Estes Park, CO - the chipmunk loves us! |
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| Cata y Juan's wedding in Columbia |
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| Bogota, Colombia |
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| At the wedding. |
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| Taos, NM |
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| Taos, NM - snowmobiling! |
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| Taos, NM |
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| Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, WA |
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| Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park, WA |
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| Madison Falls, Olympic National Park, WA |
We have two puppies - Jax and Murphy. They are basically the most ridiculous dogs on earth. Jax has an anxiety disorder. We took him to the vet and they tried to tell us repeatedly that we needed to exercise him more (we tie him to our bikes and run him like 6 miles and he still has anxiety). We had them try to trim his nails... they came back with an already filled prescription of sedatives for when he gets too riled up. Ha. Murph was given to Lila at Amarillo College (where she is a professor... Anatomy & Physiology I & II, Intro to Chemistry... yeah, we're nerds). This is the coolest and most adorable dog ever. Except he likes to chew on our shoes and underwear. And he sometimes pees on the carpet. We are still working on him.
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| Dalila and Jax |
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| Murphy |
Until next time my friends... do not hesitate to reply with how you all are doing! I love hearing about it even when I don't get to call or write everyone. Have mercy!
